Friday, May 2, 2014

Swarms and Splits.

I handed over, or at least started, the transition of my care of the bees at the Botanical Gardens this morning.

The split I made a couple of weeks ago looks good. The queen has clearly been accepted and she's started to lay. I would have hoped for more progress but at least she is laying now. Maybe the recent cold slowed her up?

The hive the split was taken from however was full of queen cells! Here are three...


I was with Jane Sueme and we decided to take the existing queen away (to simulate a swarm) and also to remove most of the other queen cells. The old queen was marked and put in a nuc box with a couple of brood frames. We left a couple of the queen cells in the remaining hive, having removed most of the others.

The cells in the photo are "spare" and I may use them in another hive, should they be needed. We hope the hive won't swarm now we have removed queen cells and that the old queen can be used elsewhere!

An interesting morning and I've not been to Ladue yet!

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